45635: Using food products for cosmetic purposes

Is it permissible to use food products for cosmetic purposes? Or in other words, is it permissible to take vegetables and fruits into the bathroom and apply them to the body and stay in the bathroom for an hour, every day, using various kinds of vegetables, after boiling them and adding some other substances to them such as spices etc?.

Praise be to Allaah.

Firstly: Using vegetables and fruits for cosmetic purposes
is not appropriate, because that is using these blessings for a purpose for
which they are not meant. It is also a kind of extravagance and wasting
time, and following every fad that comes from cosmetic surgeons and foreign
magazines and so on. The believer should set his sights higher and aim to
achieve a lofty status in the Hereafter.

Secondly:

It should be noted that the scholars differentiate between
using plants for medicinal purposes and using them for cosmetic purposes.
Shaykh Ibn ‘Uthaymeen (may Allaah have mercy on him) was asked: Some of my
friends use eggs, honey and yoghurt to treat freckles that appear on the
face. Is it permissible for them to do that?

He replied:

It is well known that these things are foods that Allaah has
created to nourish the body. If a person needs to use them for any other
purpose, such as medical treatment, there is nothing wrong with that,
because Allaah says (interpretation of the meaning):

“He it is Who created for you all that is on earth”

[al-Baqarah 2:29]

The word lakum (“for you”) includes all kinds of usage
and benefits, so long as there is nothing to indicate that it is haraam.

With regard to using them for cosmetic purposes, there are
substances which may be used for such purposes instead of these, so it
better to use those. It should be noted that there is nothing wrong with
beautifying oneself, indeed Allaah is Beautiful and loves beauty, but if a
person goes to extremes in that so that it becomes his primary concern and
he does not care about anything else, and neglects many of his worldly and
spiritual interests because of that, this is not right because it comes
under the heading of extravagance, and Allaah does not like extravagance.

From Fataawa al-Mar’ah, compiled by Muhammad
al-Musnad, p. 238.

There is nothing wrong with bringing these plant products
into the bathroom, but staying there for an hour for the purpose of
beautification comes under the heading of extravagance, as stated above.